UK bombing fears now focus on enemy within

WHETHER or not the young Muslims arrested in the home counties last week were about to embark on a bombing campaign in Britain, security experts say it is only a matter of time before an attack occurs.

It had been assumed that trademark Al-Qaeda strikes — involving suicide bombers with multiple and indiscriminate targets — would only happen if outsiders were brought in to organise and carry them out.

Now that thinking is changing. Suddenly we have been confronted with the possibility of a home-grown attack. What has happened? Could British Muslims organise carnage on the scale of Madrid or Bali? The details that have emerged about the backgrounds of those arrested last week have proved depressingly familiar. Like dozens of other young Muslims, they come from respectable families where the emphasis is on educational achievement or business success.

Their parents often arrived in Britain from Pakistan in the 1960s and 1970s